MS moves to purge Lindash from Benelux

Lindows under the cosh - again

Common Topics

Microsoft is to sue Lindows over its new name, Lindash, which it adopted a month ago to avoid further legal action in Benelux, Webwereld reports.

In late January, Lindows was served a preliminary injunction to keep it from selling the operating system under the Lindows moniker. The name created too much confusion, Microsoft argued.

Microsoft also wants Lindows to comply with a Dutch court ruling to make Lindows.com inaccessible to visitors from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Microsoft will ask the court to fine Lindows €124,000 for every day that the website is still accessible to Benelux punters.

"Microsoft knows that there is no way to effectively block only browsers from those three countries," Lindows CEO Michael Robertson wrote earlier this week on his website. A small company like Lindows obviously cannot pay such a large sum, Robertson insists. "With Microsoft's $60bn in the bank, they have a virtually unlimited legal budget with which they can simply sue, and sue again, until they win."

Lindows has halted both digital and physical Lindows sales to Benelux and in other countries where Lindows has been banned. It also removed links to resellers in those countries. "We regret the court's decision to bar sales of LindowsOS, but we fully intend to honor the court's order," Robertson says. "The only outstanding question is: just because our servers are connected to the Internet, does that mean than anyone else connected to the same wires can dictate what we do with our servers in the US?" ®